That’s true and no insult to the OP, but by 4 they should be using a fork. If he’s not in school now he will be. If you took a child that age to a restaurant or if he ate at a friends house you want him to have appropriate table manners.
WhyNot, thanks for weighing in. I’m always impressed by your parenting advice and I’ve taken away some good hints from your posts. My husband is actually a PT and when I pick him up from work today, I’ll ask one of the OTs about this and maybe see if he’ll do an evaluation for us, just in case. It couldn’t hurt, but I’m almost positive it’s not a skills issue.
I think your “different way of doing things” suggestion is what’s going on. This very much fits in with his whole personality (you should have seen how the potty training went down). I’m taking all of these suggestions from this thread and I’m going to come up with a strategy tonight.
Just to clarify again for everyone, he’s not 4. He’s nearly 4. He’s actually 3 years and 9 months. I definitely agree with the need for proper table manners, which is why we’re trying to overcome this problem. He is, in general, a very polite boy…please/thank you/you’re welcome, he asks to leave the table, says “excuse me” if he burps. I don’t want anyone to think he’s totally uncivilized or anything. 
Yes, it’s a problem.
Have you tried day care? Most kids are very Monkey See, Monkey Do, and most of the kinds in day care by that point can use utensils pretty well. After a few visits, you’ll notice a change. Of course, at that point, you’ll be on the hook to keep him there, but it may be worth it for some alone time.
That’s a little drastic, don’t you think? Day care isn’t an option for us. He actually won’t be going to school until kindergarten, when he’s 5.
Oh, perfect! And yes, I agree that it’s probably not the issue, but wouldn’t you feel just awful if you made this a battle and it really was something he couldn’t help? I did that to my son once over dragging his feet - I thought he was doing it to annoy me because he could pick up his feet just fine when I reminded him, but 30 seconds later scuff, scuff, scuff…Drove me mad! Turns out it was a real PT issue, and it was very painful for him to pick up his feet more than 20 times in a row. :smack:
Yeah, that’s my best guess, too. He sounds just like me. In a few more months, get ready for the Why Game. He’s going to start challenging everything, not to be a snot, but just because he’s very bright and wants everything to have a sound and logical reason. “Because big kids use forks,” might be totally meaningless for him because it just invites another why. After all, his hands are more efficient, they’re fun, textures are fun to explore and feel and there’s one less thing to clean - perfectly logical! “Because we don’t want to see it and you’ll eat alone until you conform,” might click.
I agree day care is a drastic step, but inviting some slightly older well mannered friends over for lunch might help. Check your local Craigslist for a playgroup if you don’t have friends with kids that age.
It’s funny, while thinking about this problem, I remembered that my mother enroled me in a deportment class when I was 4. We learned how to answer the phone properly, set a table, use the proper utensils, and basic manners. I wonder if there are any classes like that around here.
Misread header as: Parenting advice: kid won’t use toenails
What use are they, actually?
I don’t know how it is for your school system, but ours pretty much assumes that kids have had at least some exposure to “formal” group learning/playing by the time they hit kindergarten. Most families with SAHM’s in our area had their kids do at least part-time preschool (not “daycare”) by at least the summer before kindergarten.
I’m one of those “different way of doing things” people. I never really did see the value in doing something one way just because everyone else does it that way, especially if what everyone else does is much less efficient than what I do. I’ve been that way from a fairly early age, too.
What probably would have worked for me would be to explain that some people find eating wtih your hands to be gross, and people don’t like to be with people who are doing gross things. Insisting that I do something “because I said so” or “because everybody else does it this way” was usually counterproductive- at best, I’d do what they were telling me to when they were looking, and go back to my way when they weren’t. And I resented the hell out of them for trying to make me do something that I thought was stupid for what seemed to me to be no good reason.
How does he behave in public?
My kids can terribly inappropriate at the dinner table - but take them out and suddenly we are complemented on their manners (they are six and seven). Its like they know what they can get away with at home. And, at home we are pretty lax ourselves - dinner in front of the kids while I eat at the sink and Dad hasn’t gotten home yet.
Marienee’s baby thing might work as well. My stubborn daughter potty trained when we brought back diapers - he may use a fork and spoon if you go back to just feeding him toddler finger foods and telling him “he obviously isn’t old enough to have grown up food.” He won’t die on a dinner of finely diced chicken, peas and cheerios.
With my kids, the ultimate grown up food is pop. Babies don’t get pop. Little kids don’t get pop. Only responsible big kids get (very limited amounts of) pop.
I went to a class like that when I was young too. I think they probably went out with the hula hoop. 
At 7, my son sometimes prefers fingers. I simply remind him that he has a fork and to use it. It’s just manners, after all – without constant reinforcement, manners are easily forgotten. 4 is definitely old enough to be learning manners and how big of a deal you make out of it is up to you. One thing you might consider that would put the novelty back in it is to teach him to use chopsticks. Much like using his fingers, he will get attention when he is eating in public with chopsticks (you can pick up a nice enamel pair for under $10 that fit easily in a purse for dining out), and it’s always a useful skill.
Could it be that his hand eye coordination isn’t quite what it should be to make using the fork easy for him? Maybe he doesn’t see so well? It’s worth at least a glance.
ETA: If it isn’t vision, maybe some occupational therapy will help him feel more confident in using the fork. Outright avoidance like that, bespeaks a difficulty with the action that he can’t express to you.
Coming back to add, that maybe as he gets more accustomed to using forks and such, you could have “finger food” meals just for him? “Tonight we can all put aside our forks!” Or would that confuse things more? I think for me, it might help me come to terms with the idea better. I’d come to accept that sometimes a fork is used, for good manners, and sometimes I can pick my food up off the plate to eat it and not be rude.
I like Zabali Clawbane’s idea, but I think I’d save it for picnics, so that he gets the idea that sometimes using your hands can be perfectly polite, as long as you do it the right way. Fried chicken and corn on the cob wouldn’t be too hard on anyone.
One thing I wanted to mention was that my kids seem to have gone through stages where they were reluctant to do something because they could do it but not perfectly. Really little kids don’t seem to care so much, but older kids can see the difference between levels of expertise.
You know, this is probably a factor in this whole thing, too. He is such a perfectionist and there are other things he won’t do (color in coloring books, play certain games) because he doesn’t think he’ll be “good” at it.
We went to a toy store today to pick up a baby shower gift for a friend. Whadda ya know, there at the cash register were kids’ chopsticks (plastic cheater ones, with animals on them). He picked out some duck ones and is saying he’s going to use them for dinner tonight, so maybe this will motivate him to at least not use his fingers.
Let him see you giving things your best shot. Specifically show him that even though you aren’t “good” at things, you still do them, for the joy of doing things. Let him know it’s ok to be completely silly, in public. Help him see, that things don’t have to be perfect to be “perfect” if that makes sense. Once he understands that nobody is really perfect, and all you can do is the best you are able to, he should do better. Make sure he sees, that even though there might be someone who does better at a thing, that does not devalue his works in the least. It will be work to balance this, so that he will pursue excellence in his efforts, but it can be done. Yes, that is a way to phrase it: “Pursue excellence, not perfection”.
Heh. Fork usage I can teach. How not to be a perfectionist is probably not going to be easy for me…it’s such an ingrained part of my personality. When I was in 1st grade, we had a student teacher for art. We were making clay sculptures one day and she was sitting with my friend Lisa and me guiding us along. She said to me, “You are such a perfectionist.” I said thanks and she said, “That’s not a compliment.” That exchange has stuck with me my whole life because it’s something I really struggle with.
You can adopt that thought as a mantra if it would help you at all. Maybe you can both break free of the chains in time? I hope so. Or at least loosen them up. Being a perfectionist can be a blessing for some jobs I am given to understand. Good luck, in any case.